


Three Little Words

by UbiquitousMixie



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8652415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousMixie/pseuds/UbiquitousMixie
Summary: What if Jason's text message had done the trick?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t be the only one wondering what Bernie thought when she received that text message from Serena (by way of Jason/Cupid), so here’s my take on it. This is my first time writing for this fandom, into which I have fallen HARD, so be gentle. Comments are love.

It’s bloody freezing in Kiev, but Bernie finds some modicum of comfort in this. It gives her an excuse to burrow down into her baggy NHS sweatshirt and if she closes her eyes, she can almost picture herself sitting on a bench outside Holby City Hospital, waiting for Serena to emerge. She can see, as clearly as she can see the lights of the city below her from her vantage point on the roof, the wry smile Serena would give her as their eyes met before they walked shoulder to shoulder to Albie’s. 

Or rather, she can imagine the smile Serena would have given, if Bernie hadn’t gone and mucked it all up. 

Thinking of Serena makes her go hot all over, and she forgets the biting wind for a moment. She sits on the hospital’s roof, allowing herself a brief reprieve in the fresh, albeit freezing, air. She’s been at it for nearly thirteen hours with no signs of slowing, despite what her back may have to say about it. Her muscles ache but she’s not ready to call it quits just yet, only to go home to the barren, lonely flat that she’s called home for the past few months. She’ll ache either way, but at least at work she can make herself forget for a bit what she’s running from.

Bernie’s thoughts won’t quiet themselves tonight. She’s had two trauma cases -- one fatal -- and all she wants to do is pick up the phone and call Serena. She wants to hear that devilish laugh, hear her stern but ever reassuring words, and patch up the emptiness she’s been carrying around like a gunshot wound since she left for her secondment. 

As bad decisions go, this one’s up there. This hospital certainly needed her, and they’ve made it clear how grateful they’ve been to have her, but oh does she regret doing a runner. 

If Berenice Wolfe is good at anything, it’s running away from the things that terrify her. 

She laughs to herself, pulling the zip higher on her sweatshirt and snuggling down into the cotton. She’s run straight into gunfire without hesitation, but there’s something about love -- the longing, the uncertainty, the risk -- that scares the bloody hell out of her. She’d had some semblance of it with Marcus, but it wasn’t until Alex that she learned just what real, true love could look like. But Serena...Serena is in a category all on her own. 

She misses her. Aches for her, really. She’s never wanted anyone like this and that, ultimately, is what makes her palms clammy in fear. She’s never done well in relationships and she’s managed to snuff out every bright, blinding shot at happiness. She can’t bear the thought of Serena ever looking at her the way Alex did when it was all over. She can’t do that to her. She won’t. 

Only her heart seems to have a mind of its own. She can’t do a damn thing without thinking of Serena -- drinking wine, performing laparotomies, breathing. 

As the wind nips at her ears, Bernie considers the possibility that Serena might just be different. People have relationships all the time, don’t they, without mucking it all up. People shares lifetimes together and even survive the aches and pains of companionship. Bernie’s life has never been a fairytale and she’s no knight in shining armor. She’s no catch, but what if she could make Serena happy? What if Serena could make her happy in return? 

It seems bloody impossible that they could actually make a successful go of it together, but there was a time when even Berenice believed in sweet possibility. She’d instilled in her children a healthy balance of realism and hope, telling them throughout the bumps and bruises of childhood that they could actualize their dreams and have everything their little hearts desired. Why, then, can she believe that for Charlotte and Cameron but not herself?

She slips her phone from her pocket, her fingers quickly pulling up her email. Though she is untidy in most of her life, Bernie is fastidious about organizing her email, and thus there are several saved missives -- one from Cameron, one from a cousin about a great aunt’s upcoming birthday shindig in Bath, and one from Serena. She doesn’t need to read the email to recall its contents; she’s memorized it at this point. Serena isn’t angry anymore (a lie, to be sure). It’s time to come home. The hospital (Serena?) needs her. 

She doesn’t need the hospital, not really. A job is a job, and in her line of work even a bloody butcher’s block can serve as a surgical bay in the right (or wrong) circumstances. She’s never wanted to need anyone, or anything. She loves her children, but she doesn’t need them -- she’s unlearned that for their sakes.

But Serena. Oh, beautiful, dark eyed Serena. Bernie is quite sure that she may need her after all. Her heart swells at the thought of her. How much nicer this quiet roof would be if Serena were there with her, their arms tucked around each other, bracing themselves against the chill. 

She remembers then the pain in Serena’s eyes when she left, when she pulled herself from Serena’s grasp to flee. She dreams of that haunted, devastated look and sometimes wakes in a cold sweat. 

Bernie left to try, in her way, to protect Serena from the inevitability of heartbreak. She left because she wanted to avoid a relationship gone wrong, wanted to protect the fragile, special gift of Serena’s friendship by sacrificing the very fierceness of her love. Serena’s steady loyalty and fast friendship had given Bernie more happiness than she knew she deserved. Adding love to the mix was never a guarantee that the happiness would last; in Bernie’s experience, adding love and sex and expectations was a sure way to ensure that she ended up heartbroken and alone. 

That’s why she ran. If she and Serena didn’t start a relationship, then it could never end. 

That’s why she sits, cold and alone, on an empty roof in Kiev -- because she’s a sodding coward who desperately needs the beloved woman she ran away from. 

Bernie shakes her head. Protecting the sanctity of their friendship has hurt a good deal more than she ever anticipated; she had put that friendship on the line in order to preserve it, and what good had it done? 

Her phone beeps where she holds it in her hand and she glances at the screen, anticipating a desperate plea for her presence downstairs on the trauma unit. Instead, her pulse quickens to see that the text is from one Serena Campbell. 

<i>I MISS YOU</i>

Bernie smiles, these three little words forcing her to her feet. There is work to be done. 

There’s Serena, who misses her, who needs her also. 

It’s time to go home. 

\--- 


End file.
